What is current Nigerian unemployment rate?

What is the current rate of unemployment in Nigeria? What to expect in the future? Learn in this article!

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Employment crisis

Nigeria’s employment crisis worsened in the first quarter of 2016, with the unemployment rate rising to 12.1 per cent.

The shocking results of Unemployment Watch report shown, that, the population of unemployed Nigerians increased by 518,000 to over 1.45 million between December 2015 and March 2016. During the same period economically active or working age population increased from 105.02 million. However, the actual population of people willing, able and actively looking for work rose by 1.99 percent, from 76.9 million to 78.4 million.

Failure of government

The report also stated that government failed to create a minimum of 1.5 million jobs required for the period to keep the unemployment rate constant at 10.4 per cent. Moreover, the unemployment situation has even worsened.

Women and youth suffer

The NBS said women population in the labor force continued to be affected more by the country’s unemployment and underemployment crisis compared to men. 14 percent of women in the labor force age bracket were unemployed in the first quarter of 2016. And 22.2 percent of women were underemployed during the same period.

Future forecast

Forecast says that unemployment Rate in Nigeria is expected to be 13.50 percent by the end of this quarter. Looking forward, it is estimated that unemployment rate will increase to 14.00 in 12 months time. According to econometric models, the rate is going to be around 12.56 percent in 2020 in the long-term.